


Pelagius Redeemed

by concertigrossi



Category: Avatar - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-08
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 20:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concertigrossi/pseuds/concertigrossi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which demons are faced, wounds are healed and a victory becomes the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WebsAndWhiskers](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=WebsAndWhiskers).



> This is the World’s Most Overdue Help_Haiti fic, but now it’s finished. Many, many thanks to [](http://websandwhiskers.livejournal.com/profile)[**websandwhiskers**](http://websandwhiskers.livejournal.com/), a patroness as generous as she is patient. Thanks also to my fabulous beta-readers, [](http://rexluscus.livejournal.com/profile)[**rexluscus**](http://rexluscus.livejournal.com/), [](http://stasia.livejournal.com/profile)[**stasia**](http://stasia.livejournal.com/) and IshyMaria, who saw me through this drawn-out process.

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, Avatar does not belong to me.  


“SHIT SHIT SHIT!” snarled Trudy Chacon as her Samson took the first shot. She wasn’t afraid: she knew she didn’t have time to be, not now. Her wounded mount shuddered as it took more fire. “SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK!” She was going down. There was no hope for it. “At least it’s a pretty place to die…”

Without thinking, she flicked on the mic. “Norm, I love you.”

Christ, had she really just said that on an open channel? She better really be dead, for the amount of ragging she was going to take. She slapped her mask on, slammed the emergency eject and prayed.

The gunship exploded in a ball of fire underneath her.

They say that, in the few seconds before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. There were large chunks that she could’ve done without seeing again. Dad and Lisbet dying of their burns when she pulled them out onto the roof, out of the storm surge. That awful patch in the Badlands where Gropo had bought it. Mom’s face when she got her diagnosis.

But then, neither was it all bad. There was that moment, on the trip to Luna, when they broke above the smogline for the first time and she saw all that pure, pure blue. There was that thing that Gropo used to do with her tongue.

And there was Norm.

The exact moment she fell in love with him came into sharp focus. He’d gotten a bottle of wine from God-knows-where - real wine, not alcosynth, not that marginally sublethal hooch that the miners distilled - and while Jake and Grace were out in the field, he'd set up a vidscreen under one of the windows at the shack, with cushions around it. He’d put on some old 2-D movie, and they drank the wine and watched it while lying in each other’s arms.

She looked up at one point and saw that he was staring out the window. He noticed her glance, and explained. “I had to take this lit class - all this poetry about wine and women in the moonlight. I’ve never actually experienced it before…”

Something in his eyes took her breath away. “That’s not a moon, it’s a planet.”

“Close enough,” he said, and kissed her.

Dammit, she was going to die without knowing how that movie ended.

This struck her as extraordinarily funny. She was still laughing when the world went black.

——

Waking up, now, that was a surprise.

She blinked at the white light, and tried to look around.

It hurt.

She was in… sickbay?

She looked over at the bed next to hers. A familiar figure lay awkwardly on it.

“Norm…?” she asked. Her tongue felt like sandpaper.

Her voice shocked Norm out of a sound sleep. He jumped up, tangled in his sheets, and fell off the bed. He scrambled up and kissed her hard. “Oh my God, my God. You’re alive… I love you. God, Trudy, I love you.”

As gratifying as this was, she was confused and feeling like she’d been run over by a bulldozer. What was going on?

“All right - yeah, I’m alive... What the hell happened?” She started to push herself up on the bed.

“No, wait! Not until you get checked out… Max! Max! She’s awake!” He ran off.

Exhausted by this minor effort, she slumped back down. She was left alone for a few minutes; this was more than unusual. There should’ve been a bunch of duty nurses and (at least on Pandora, anyway) an entire ward of recovering patients. Dr. Patel hurried in, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Wow, Trudy, it’s good to have you back.” He began to examine her, waving a light in her eyes. “How do you feel? Are you in any pain?”

“What happened?” asked Trudy.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

The last thing she remembered was… was talking to Max on the comm. Right. “Quaritch was rigging a bomb to destroy the Well of Souls. We were going to war.”

Norm shot Max a panicked look. Max held up his hands reassuringly. “Memory loss is completely normal after a major trauma. It may or may not be temporary. Trudy, you were pretty beat up when they brought you in. We got you started on nanos right away, but it took them nearly two months to repair all the damage.”

Two months! And since when did a mere pilot rate nanotech treatments? “Nanos? I hope to hell we won, or I’m going to be in debt forever. What happened to me?”

Norm grabbed her hand. “We won, baby.”

“What?”

Norm recounted the tale as Max continued her physical exam. He told her of the battle, about Eywa entering the fight. He told of her heroism, about how she hit the Dragon. She tried to concentrate, but his words were making her head spin. They’d actually won? Jake was Na’vi? Selfridge and everyone else were on their way back to Earth? And God in Heaven, she really wasn’t dead. A stabbing throb started up behind her eyes; it was getting to be too much.

Max caught on right away; the stress began to show on the monitors. “Norm, back off. An information dump isn’t going to help.”

“Right… sorry.” Norm settled down, but kept the death grip on her hand.

Max ran her through the standard battery of tests - remember three objects, count backwards from ten, name the CEO of RDA and so forth. She answered mechanically; she was so tired. Why was she tired? She’d just been out for ages! It wasn’t fair, but the exhaustion engulfed her, as inexorable as the tide.

“It’s okay, Trudy, nanos take a lot out of you. Fatigue is an extremely common aftereffect. It’s going to take you some time to recover. If you need to sleep, sleep some more.”

“We’ll be right here, I promise,” said Norm.

She rallied a little. “You go running off with some blue girl and I’m gonna fucking kill you…”

Max and Norm grinned widely: it was the most Trudy thing she’d said up until now. Norm, however, sobered up quickly. “I can’t. My avatar got killed.”

Her fading consciousness flagged this as something very bad, very bad indeed, but her body overruled her mind. She crashed hard.

———

She slept for another two days.

This awakening was much better than the last. She was able to sit up completely and look around. Max sat alone at the console, going over some data. “So it wasn’t just a bad dream, then?” she asked.

Max laughed, and got up to check her over. “Sorry, no. How are you feeling? You should be able to get up today.”

“Better. Still trashed, though. Where’s Norm?” She submitted wearily to the poking and prodding.

“I convinced him to go get a change of clothes. He’s barely left the med center since you were brought in.”

“How is he doing?”

Max stopped. “Physically, he’s fine.”

“Oh no…. What happened? It’s the avatar, right?”

“He’d be pissed enough about the avatar dying, but it’s not just that. Trudy, he died in it… or rather, it died with him in it. He felt it die. Four avatars got hit. Anderson’s had a leg wound – he and it have both healed fine – but Lauren’s and Javier’s avatars got hit in the head and spine, and Lauren and Javier died of neurogenic shock. Out of the three fatal avatar injuries, Norm is the only one who survived.”

Shit. She’d liked Lauren and Javier. “You said that physically, he’s fine,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“I checked him out as soon as I could. How he didn’t fry synapses I’ll never know, but he rejoined the fight anyway in a breath mask. It’s the psychological damage I’m worried about.”

Which, as she well knew, could be worse than a physical wound, and so much harder to heal. She digested this for a second. “What are you doing for him?”

“Nothing. He won’t talk about it. Not to anyone. I only know about the nightmares from the nights he spent sleeping here.”

Trudy put her head in her hands. “Can you fix the avatar?”

Max shook his head. “No. By the time we found it, it had been partially eaten by viperwolves. I’ve got the amnio tanks from the ISV, and all the supplies to grow a new one.” He nodded over at the large placenta chamber.

“Will that work?”

“We’ll find out in six years…”

Anyone who’d spent more than five minutes in Norm’s company knew he’d devoted his life to earning a place on the avatar program; losing that on top of additional psychic trauma? She’d have to find out for herself once she got him alone. Not that it sounded like he was willing to talk…. But then, while she was at it, they were marooned light-years from home on a lethal planet, and she was recovering from massive trauma and a two-month medically-induced coma. If she wanted things to worry about, there wasn’t a shortage.

Trudy rubbed her temples.

“You okay?” Max asked, watching her carefully.

“Yeah. Just tired.” Her stomach rumbled. “And hungry. Got anything to eat?”

Max smiled and flipped the comm switch. “Hey Norm, Sleeping Beauty is up. And wanting some breakfast.”

The comm squawked in reply: “I’ll be right there!”

Trudy smiled.

They started the tests again, checking her neurological and physiological responses. She got out of bed and took a few steps, with Max as a careful spotter; her limbs felt as heavy as lead, like she was wearing an amp-suit with a nearly-dead generator. She loathed the feeling of weakness, but let Max help her back into bed when she started to falter.

“Well, you’re in phenomenal shape, all things considered. We’ll have to keep checking, and of course you’re going to have to be careful, but you should make a full recovery.” He smiled. “Good to have one more human around.”

“How many of us stayed?”

“Out of the survivors? Thirty-six.”

The base had had a full complement of several thousand. Amazing.

Norm entered with a tray. The smell made her mouth water; it wasn’t rations, but actual food. Bacon and eggs and toast and…

“Strawberries? Are those strawberries?” She had only ever seen them in pictures.

“We raided Selfridge’s private freezer,” Norm explained.

Max grinned. “Norm had to guard those for you with his life.”

“I could get used this.” She dug in.

“Everyone’s been waiting to see you, Trudy. Are you up for visitors?” asked Max.

She grinned ruefully. “I guess I gotta get it over with.”

Max smiled, and tapped her chart on the table. “I’ll go give them the good news.”

As soon as he was gone, Norm spoke. “We really didn’t think you’d make it, but we thought you had a better chance with us than on the ship home. We weren’t sure what to do, if you’d rather take your chances back on Earth…”

“It’s all good.” And suddenly, she realized, it really was. “This has got to beat standing trial for treason, right?”

Norm exuded relief. “That’s what I figured.”

Cheated of the adrenaline of victory, she felt oddly empty. It was taking a while for her mind to wrap around such a momentous event. “How badly are they taking this back home?”

Norm gave a gallows chuckle. “It’s a good thing the superluminal can’t overheat. We actually got the jump on RDA with the news. I think they were hoping to keep it quiet. Speaking of standing trial for treason - we’ve all been officially designated as terrorists by the NAFTA countries. We were tried in absentia and publicly sentenced to death, though there’s a pretty good chance that will be overturned.”

She was expecting that. “Least it’ll take the hangman a while to get here.” She'd felt a frisson of distress at hearing this, but, as was her wont, she mentally slotted it into the category of “Problems That Need To Be Solved.”

“What are we going to do about that?”

“Therein hangs the problem. Or, I should say, problems. We’ve been doing everything we can to get the news back to everyone at home. If we can get videos of what Quaritch was planning for the Well of Souls, we can have RDA’s monopoly broken, and have Pandora declared a sovereign entity by the Interplanetary Commerce Administration. Ameera’s talking to everyone she can get ahold of, all the newscorps, all the movers and shakers. She’s even managed to make contact with ‘The Movement,’ which has been useful, but…” He shuddered.

“They’re ineffective?”

“No. Just annoying. Ever sat down to dinner with someone from the Fighting Keyboard Militia?”

She groaned. “That bad?”

“They’ve decided Jake’s download is a sign that he’s the Second Coming. Literally, no exaggeration.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Sad but true. Jake Sully Died for Our Sins and was reborn as a Na’vi to Save Us All.”

Trudy snorted.

“They’re trying to get together funding for their own avatar program, so that they can fly out here and ‘Become One With The People.’ We haven’t actually told the Na’vi about that part yet, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to them.”

“Oh man… but even if the legal bullshit gets straightened out, that’s not going to be enough. They’ll send raiders and claim they can’t be responsible for piracy.”

Norm nodded. “That’s the next part. If we can talk to, say, XeWalCo or the Esbux Conglom, we can get a top-of-the-line planetary defense system, teach the Na’vi how to run it – but for that, we need cash.”

“Cash? When we’re on the biggest -hell, the only- chunk of unobtanium anywhere?”

“Well, let’s just say that the Na’vi were… unreceptive to the idea of resuming the mining.”

“But it’s for their defense!”

“That’s the other half of the problem. There’s a huge meeting going on just outside the base… they’re trying to figure out what to do about us. They’re furious at the idea of us mining for more ore, and accusing us of throwing off RDA just to keep the profits for ourselves.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Well, yeah, but we’ve got a really bad track record when it comes to the phrase 'trust us.' The majority of the tribes who actually fought in the battle are on our side… it’s mostly the ones who didn’t get here in time.”

And who were being especially reactionary in response to missing that opportunity. Trudy rolled her eyes. “RDA’ll come in with guns blazing. The big guns this time, and to hell with the treaty. Have you told them how out-of-date the equipment we have here is?”

“We’ve tried. But the prevailing feeling is that the Na’vi beat them once, with Eywa’s help, and they can do it again, if necessary. We’re doing what we can to build up defenses, and teaching at least the Omaticaya to use the equipment… incidentally, we need a flight instructor, if you’re up for it.”

“I guess I could manage.” She smiled. Any concrete action, however quixotic, was better than nothing.

“For the time being, we’re okay. Jake has gotten the Omaticaya to at least recognize us as honorary tribe members - the Omaticaya have taken over the area around the base, by the way, until they find a new Hometree. He’s their new Olo’eyktan.”

“So wait - he’s really Na’vi? Permanently?”

Norm nodded. “We buried his human body.”

She stopped chewing. “How is that even possible? He literally switched bodies?”

“Mo’at performed a ceremony at the Well of Souls - basically she proved all of Grace’s theories about it being a neural net. She was able to permanently transfer his brainwave energy from his human body to his avatar. We’ve got only the faintest idea how, and Mo’at wouldn’t let us take readings while it was happening, but it worked.”

“Unbelievable. Are the rest of them going to try this transfer thing?”

She regretted the question instantly as Norm’s face closed off. “Max told me he told you about Lauren and Javier. But yeah, everyone else is. They’ve just got to get accepted into a tribe first before they’ll be allowed.”

She absolutely burned to ask him whether he’d do it, if he still had the avatar, but she didn’t dare - it was way, way too fraught. For her as well, much to her surprise: would he abandon her to run off into the forest, if given the chance? And when did she start caring that much? Dammit, she’d just been looking for a bit of fun… time to change the subject. “So let’s get this straight: we can’t go home, the Na’vi don’t want us here, we’re under sentence of death and there’s probably a bigass army headed our way?”

Norm nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

“I’m going back to sleep.” She laughed, but he didn’t, and the expression on his face gave her pause. “Norm, it’s all right. We knew what we were getting into.” She took his hand and looked up at him, really looked at him for the first time since she’d woken up. He was thinner, if that was possible, and the lines around his face cut deeper. He had great big circles under his eyes.

Norm swallowed hard. “Try the strawberries. They’re really good.”

She did. They were the best thing she’d ever eaten.

The door burst open, letting in a crowd of humans and one Na’vi in a rebreather. A cheer went up at the sight of Trudy awake and alert. Max led this motley parade - as Trudy would soon discover, the humans had taken to celebrating every event or milestone that came along for the sake of morale, and this was a better reason than most. They clustered around Trudy’s bed, everyone speaking at once.

Jake reached his hand over the crowd. “Chacon, damn, it’s good to see you up and around.”

Seeing a Na’vi in a breath mask caused a brief second of cognitive dissonance. Jake held out a fist.

She bumped it. “Yeah, well, only the good die young. Norm says you’ve gone native for keeps?”

He grinned. “I’m thinking of it as an upgrade.”

“Jesus, girl, you look like shit!” shouted a petite woman of indeterminate Asian descent, as her turn came in the scrum around the bed.

“Hey, Jiang-Mei! You stayed?” Trudy exclaimed, laughing. Jiang-mei McSweeney, also known as the only mechanic Trudy would trust with her gunship. That was good news.

Jake smiled. “It’s amazing, the number of gunships and AMPsuits that developed mechanical problems on the day of the attack…”

McSweeney grinned slyly. “I told them, I kept saying, ‘You got to get me more maintenance downtime, or these things just aren’t going to work right.’ Not my fault they picked a bad day to start malfunctioning.”

“Never piss off a mechanic,” said Trudy, in the tones of one quoting the Gospel truth.

The party continued. Trudy tried to stay alert as long as she could, but this was too overwhelming. Max and Norm chased everybody out when she started to nod off.

When she woke again an hour later (and she was getting very, very sick of this acquired narcolepsy, for all that Max said that it was temporary), she insisted on getting out of bed and walking a little. How she despised this feeling of weakness!

“When do I get out of here?” she grumbled.

“Well, I need to keep an eye on your recovery, but as long as you’re willing to wear the monitor and have someone stay with you, you should be okay,” said Max.

“Any volunteers?” She arched her eyebrow at Norm. He agreed, blushing, but Trudy could have sworn she saw a flash of fear in his eyes.

“I didn’t think there’d be a problem with that,” snickered Max.

“Let’s go, then. I hate sick bay.”

Norm insisted on bringing her in a wheelchair; she argued, but in the end she was glad when she saw where they were going. Since they were now unoccupied, the humans had taken over the high-rise apartments usually reserved for senior RDA staff. She whistled as they brought her in; she’d known the executive apartments were pretty sweet, but she’d never been in one before. There were four rooms. Four rooms! A bedroom, an office, a bathroom and a living space with vidscreen. The last apartment she’d lived in with four rooms had also housed eleven other people.

“Where are your things?” She still couldn’t believe this was all hers.

“Next door.” Norm blushed again. “I didn’t want to presume.”

She smiled.

She was tearingly hungry - nano side-effects again - so Norm fixed her some dinner, and afterwards, they rested on the couch.

“What was that flick you showed me that night at the Shack? Can you put it on? I want to see the ending this time,” she said.

“‘Casablanca’? I’m glad you liked it… so many people complain that 2-D gives them a headache.” He complied.

———

“Whoa whoa whoa wait… are you sure you’re in good enough condition? Maybe we should ask Max before….”

“No, we are definitely not going ask Max before. Shut up and kiss me.”

———

Trudy ended up in bed, still not having seen the end of the movie, with an exhausted Norm lying prone beside her. It had been a bit too much for her, but she didn’t care. She was alive, damn it, and she was going to grow stronger.

She slept like the dead; she didn’t even stir when Norm slipped away into the other room.

He got her breakfast in bed the next day, and sat with her as she ate, before he went to the lab. As it turned out, he and Max spent most of their time monitoring the avatars embedded with the Omaticaya, a tedious but necessary task. Norm briefly put forth the idea that she should come with him and rest in sickbay, but she shot that down pretty quickly. She was done with the hospital for a while.

“I’ll be right on the other end of the monitor, okay? You need anything, you call.”

Once alone, she settled on the couch, and made yet another attempt to watch “Casablanca,” but she hardly had time before Ameera stopped by to chat and bring her up to speed on how things were going (not well; they were at a standstill until the situation with the Na’vi was resolved). Then Jiang-Mei, to give her a progress update on her Samson. And so on and so forth, until practically the entire human population of the base had dropped by. Norm hadn’t even orchestrated this - she was just the closest thing anyone had to a new person to talk to.

It was really nice, but exhausting.

Norm came back to make her dinner, and they settled in for the night. The next day, when Norm came for lunch, incipient cabin fever demanded that she get, if not exactly fresh air, at least a change of scenery. He agreed to escort her out for a walk. She leaned heavily on her lover, and the progress was slow, but she simply rejoiced at being outside.

They’d shut down most of the base to conserve power; already the margins were being eaten by the jungle, but far from being desolate, the Base was bustling. Jake and several of the other avatars were gathered on the flightline with a large group of Na’vi, clearly running a class on Earth weaponry and tactics. They’d set up a Na’vi-height table; the parts of an assault rifle had been laid out neatly and labeled, and a large area had been roped off as a shooting range.

The Na’vi were catching on quickly, if the targets at the end of the runway were any indication.

She wandered up to listen in. When Jake saw her, he interrupted the class. “This is Trudy Chacon,” he said. “We would have gotten nowhere without her. She is also of the Jarhead Clan.”

A ripple went through the crowd, and the assembled Na’vi looked at her with increased respect.

She asked Norm about the reaction as they were walking away. “You’re from the same 'tribe' that produced Toruk Makto. They’ll be expecting you to do something equally impressive.”

“Great.”

The hangar was another hive of activity. Na’vi and AMP-suited humans were working on several gunships and a Valkyrie. Jiang-Mei waved and ran over.

“Wow… didn’t expect to see you so busy,” said Trudy.

“Hell yeah. We’re rebuilding and modding out the aircraft that survived to work in Na’vi hands. Thank God for redundancy, that’s all I have to say. We’ve got duplicates and triplicates of everything - damn near enough to assemble a new ISV from scratch, and tools that’ll work on Na’vi scale.”

“Nice. How’s it going?”

“Oh my God, these guys are great. Get me an avionics textbook translated into Na’vi, and we can take over the Universe.”

Norm nodded. “The Diamond theory.”

“The what?”

“The Diamond theory. Named after a 21st-century polymath, Dr. Jared Diamond. His theory was that the populations in hunter-gatherer societies skewed towards higher intelligence, the reason being that Nature tends not to forgive the stupid and the reckless.”

Jiang-Mei grinned. “Makes sense. Anyway, chica, we’ll have a new bird up and running for you to test out in a few days. Try not to be so hard on this one, okay?”

“It’s not my fault it got shot out from under me…” Trudy laughed.

“Yeah yeah yeah… excuses excuses…” Jiang-Mei shot over her shoulder as she ran out to work.

They walked a bit further, to the outer wall, and saw the Omaticaya encampment on the other side.

“They’re prepping to leave for the Gathering of the Clans,” Norm explained. “In a few weeks, they’ll have a enough representatives at the Tree of Souls for a planet-wide Olo’uxulta, and we’ll get a chance to plead our case.”

She nodded, and looked back out at the encroaching jungle. When she turned back to Norm, she stopped short. His face had gone sheet-white, and he stared out at the forest as if at any moment something would spring out to attack him.

“What is it?” she asked.

He jumped. “Nothing. Nothing.”

Her brow furrowed; she couldn’t have asked for a better lead-in. “Are you doing all right? I’m sorry you lost your avatar.”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine. Max is working on growing me a new one.”

“You were in it when it got hit, he said.”

Norm shrugged. “It hurt, but it was the avatar, not me. I’m fine.”

“Max says you’ve been having nightmares…”

“Yeah, well, Max should mind his own goddamn business. He won’t leave me alone, and now he’s got you nagging me,” snapped Norm.

Trudy’s eyebrows shot up, and her voice honed to a sharp edge. “Was that supposed to convince me of your sanity? Because I gotta tell you, that’s not the way to do it.”

Norm, instantly contrite, took her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair. Look, the past few months haven’t been easy. Yeah, I’m stressed and tired, but come on, it’s not like we haven’t had a lot to deal with.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “He’s just worried, is all.”

Norm nodded. “I’m fine. Let’s go back.”

Trudy was not reassured, but didn’t know how to proceed. She turned with him to go back to the base.

As they walked, she saw the sign at the checkpoint - Hell’s Gate had been crossed out, but nothing had gone up to replace it. Norm followed her gaze. “There’s a raging debate as to what to call ourselves. We’re voting on it as soon as the Na’vi say we can stay permanently.”

She started laughing, so hard that the laugh turned into a racking cough. Norm hovered over her like a broody hen. “Pitcairn,” she said. “And we all know who Fletcher Christian is.”

“That’s awful,” said Norm, an answer belied by his own laughter. “No one’ll vote for that….”

Still, the cough pushed Norm’s fears over the edge, and he escorted her back to the apartment.

For two weeks, they kept to this basic pattern, as Trudy grew stronger and she needed less sleep. She added more PT as fast as Max would let her, and within days she was able to walk to the hangar and back without getting out of breath. She threw herself into the exercise, determined to get back to fighting form as soon as she could. She kept watching Norm for signs of PTSD, but couldn’t be sure of anything. It didn’t help that the man had a point. He was tired, but sure, they were all tired. He was stressed, but how could he not be? If he seemed a bit down, well, wasn’t depression occasionally a reasonable reaction to an extraordinary situation? At what point did it become a pathology?

She’d woken up once, in the middle of the night and found him working in front of a console. He’d passed it off as temporary insomnia. She tried to stay up later to watch him but she was hardly well herself. She overdid it, and bought herself a few more days of non-stop involuntary napping.

And so, when she recovered from her setback and McSweeney told her that her Samson was ready, it was all she could do not to sprint out to the tarmac.

They ran through the pre-flight checks, and she hopped in. Technically, she hadn’t been given the medical all-clear and ought to have a spotter, but there was no one else who could fly these things anyway. She placed her talisman on the dash: a vidframe of her family, in that last happy summer before the storm came, downloaded from her personal storage drives.

This gunship was a bit different: in addition to the main pilot’s seat (rebuilt to fit a Na’vi pilot), it had a secondary set of controls behind, slightly elevated. The configuration took some getting used to, but it handled mostly the same. She took off with a roar and slipped the surly bonds of Pandora.

For the first time since she’d woken up, she felt whole.

Most of the other pilots had bitched incessantly about flying the science sorties, but Trudy had volunteered, and volunteered gladly.

It was just that damned beautiful.

From her very first day, she couldn’t believe it. She flew over green mountains and blue waters, rushing over heartstopping cliffs and sailing over open plains. It was what she’d always imagined flying to be; the simulators back home ran with images of Earth as it had been (unless you were training for a specific mission) but here it was all in front of her, all real. She could race for the horizon, sure that a vista just as astonishing waited on the other side.

Would she have wanted to go home again, to fly combat runs through smoke and ruin and smog?

Not a chance in hell.

She landed, ready to begin her first lesson. Neytiri was the first volunteer, as it happened. Trudy ran her through the pre-flight checks - all the things that a pilot should look for to make sure the flight wouldn’t end up on the ground sooner than intended. Neytiri was a quick study, and missed very little.

Including the vidframe on Trudy’s dashboard. Fascinated, she asked Trudy about it.

“It’s nothing. Just a vid. My family.”

“They must miss you terribly.”

“They died. Years ago.”

“They are dead?” said Neytiri, replaying the recording.

“Yeah. Let’s get going.”

Neytiri put it down reluctantly, and climbed into her seat. She lifted the end of her queue, and looked at Trudy questioningly.

It took Trudy a second to figure out what she meant. “Oh! No… we don’t have any interfaces like that in the aircraft.”

“Truly? But you have the technology… the dreamwalkers can communicate in that manner…”

“Nah, it might be nice, but you saw all the equipment in the lab that makes the avatars run. It’s not practical in an aircraft. Out here, it’s just our hands and eyes.”

“How interesting.”

They took off, and once they were airborne, Trudy allowed Neytiri to get the feeling for the controls. The years Neytiri had spent on the back of a banshee both helped and hindered. She had no fear, none at all. She had a good instinct for how the air would behave, if not necessarily how to translate that to the Samson’s movement. She had a tendency to both under- and overreact in the air, but that would be corrected with practice. In the teacher's seat, where Neytiri couldn’t see, Trudy grinned. This would be easier than she thought.

They finished the lesson, but Neytiri’s eyes kept going back to the vidframe on the dash.

After the lesson, they both helped with the post-flight maintenance. Trudy missed having a full ground crew to do this scut work for her: the ratio of maintenance work to actual flight time was something appalling, but the Omaticayan volunteers were catching on fast. As they were wrapping up, she got a signal on the airship’s comm. “Trudy, this is Max. Can you come see me when you’re done?”

That was odd. “Sure. See you in fifteen.”

Max stood by the amnio tank, checking the nutrient and hormone levels of the fetal avatar within. He looked up when Trudy entered, and greeted her. “How’d the flight go?”

“Fine. Neytiri’s a natural. What’s up?”

Max gave her a level look. “Over there.”

She looked over to the console and spotted Norm. She hadn’t seen him there before - he was slumped over, partially hidden by the monitor, and he was snoring gently.

“Does he do this every day?” she asked.

Max nodded. “He pretends he doesn’t. Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m more worried that he’s sleeping here all the time, or that he actually thinks I haven’t noticed. Doesn't he sleep at all at night?”

Trudy thought back to the lame insomnia excuse, and looked at the dark circles under Norm’s eyes. “Until I came in here, I would have sworn he did.”

“He blew up at me last time I tried to broach the subject of the nightmares. Made me swear I wouldn’t tell you. Trudy, he can’t keep on like this... We’re going to have to do something.”

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered. He wasn’t just avoiding dealing with this, he was trying to hide it from her. Which meant that 1) he knew there was a problem, 2) he knew it was severe enough that people would try to intervene, and 3) if he was specifically hiding it from her, he was afraid of how the situation would be perceived.

Well, that answered some of her questions, anyway, even if it brought up dozens more.

“Let me see what I can do, first.”

——-

She went back to the apartment. She’d get him to sleep in her bed that night if she had to pull out every wile she’d ever heard of.

——-

Her wiles did work, though they exhausted her as much as they did him. In fact, if Norm’s screams had been any quieter, she might not have woken at all.

She sat bolt upright. “What!? What!?”

Norm flopped like a beached fish in the bed, screaming and scrabbling at a spot on his chest. He sucked in air like he couldn’t breathe.

She grabbed his hands. “Norm, you’re fine. It’s just a dream. I’m right here.” She tried to pull him to her, but his convulsions made it impossible.

He calmed a little, but still shuddered uncontrollably. He locked his eyes to hers, but all she saw in them was abject, primal terror. “Oh God, Oh God, Trudy, are you dead too?”

“No… look, we’re both fine. We’re here.”

“Because you got hit! You got hit! I saw you go down, oh God Trudy I’m sorry…”

“Norm! It’s okay! We’re in bed. It’s okay. It was your avatar that got hit, not you. Etorya saved me.” She pulled him close to her and tried to hang on.

Eventually, he stilled. As came to his senses, a horrified look crept over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m fine. I... I just need to use the bathroom…” He scrambled out of bed and vanished into the restroom.

With every ounce of willpower, she stayed up until he came back out again. “How long are you going to keep doing this?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Christ, Norm, you’re not taking care of yourself! Do you honestly think you can survive without sleep?”

“I gotta go.”

“No you don’t!” She caught his wrist. “You’ve been doing this for weeks!”

“It’s not that big of a deal!”

“If it’s not that big of a deal, then what’s with the nightmares? Why are you avoiding sleeping here? Tell me what’s going on, Norm!”

“What do you mean, what’s going on!?” He started to strike back. “Is your amnesia flaring up again?”

“This isn’t about me. Don’t change the subject! You need to deal with this shit!” She tried to rein in her reaction. “Look, I know you’ve had a hell of a time. I don’t remember nearly dying and you do… I can’t imagine…”

“That’s got nothing to do with it. The avatar got hit! Not me! It isn’t real!”

“Oh, bull! You think it’s not real!? They’ve been working on how to treat shit like this for centuries, and you’re acting like it’s a phantom! It’s a wound as real as any other. Get help, goddammit.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“I’m not calling you crazy!”

“It’s not that big of a deal! I’ll get over it by myself!”

“IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE WITHOUT TREATMENT. Look, Sergeant Bakersen. Best soldier I ever met. We would’ve followed him through hell. Every hellhole, every wretched nasty little battle, we saw it together and he saved our asses more times than I can count. One fight, he ended up holding off an entire platoon of insurgents for six hours with nothing more than a sniper rifle and five grenades and came out without a scratch on him. He got the Medal of Honor for that one, and do you know how many people actually get the Medal of Honor and live? He ground through it all, but ate the barrel of his gun six months after getting discharged. You know why? Because, in the end, nothing could beat him but the trauma running around inside his own head! So talk to somebody. It doesn’t have to be me; talk to Max, hell, talk to Sully. If he was in Venezuela I can damn well guarantee that he’s seen some shit he wishes he hadn’t.”

“He was a real soldier after a real war. I was barely in one battle. There’s no logical reason for me to be like this.” Norm was turning sullen.

“There isn’t any reason to this at all, of any kind! But this is how it goes: your head’s three inches to the right, you’re having a beer that night with your squad. Three inches to the left, and your CO is writing home to your family about how you died a hero. That’s just how it is. And if you’re fortunate enough to be three inches to the right, you go on with your life and you get the help you need. Anything else is an insult to the people who weren’t so lucky, and who’d give anything to be in your shoes.”

After all that, they sat in silence. Norm couldn’t bring himself to look at her, and when she reached out to touch his arm, he flinched away. “It’s late. I need to go to bed.” He stormed out and went into his own barely-used apartment, slamming the door behind him.

She tried to follow him, but the door was locked.

Exhausted, she returned to her room and flopped back on the bed. “That could’ve gone better.”

\--------------------

 **Author's Note:**

Jared Diamond is a real person, who put forth that idea in his excellent book Guns, Germs and Steel.


	2. Chapter 2

For the next week, they didn’t speak, not really. How Norm managed to avoid being alone with her on a planet with a total human population of less than forty, she never knew, but he managed. Either he shut himself in his own apartment, or made sure that, when it couldn’t be avoided, there was always someone else present and that no conversation rose above the level of commonplace pleasantry.

They went about their respective routines, as usual. Trudy told Max about the complete failure, but they were at a loss as to what to do next. An intervention seemed the only other choice, but it wasn’t one either of them wanted to undertake. It would be so much better for all concerned if Norm could be convinced to seek treatment on his own.

One morning, eight days after the fight, she went out to the hangar and found Neytiri waiting for her, as usual, but with Mo’at standing next to her. Mo’at, like most of the Tsahiks, avoided the base like the plague, and her presence caused no small amount of comment. Norm was already hurrying over from the medlab.

Neytiri greeted her. “Your picture of your family - the video? May I show it to my mother?”

Trudy was taken aback, but agreed. “Sure. Let me get it for you.” She got the vidframe out and handed it over. It seemed so small in a Na’vi hand.

“These are a -what was the word? recording? - of your family?” asked Neytiri, for Mo’at’s benefit. “And they are dead?”

“Yeah. They died in a hurricane…” From the confused looks she got, the word didn’t translate. “A really big storm. There was a flood.” She looked to Norm gratefully when he ran up. “Mo’at was asking about my family,” she said, gesturing to the small screen. “My father and sisters died during Hurricane Sara.”

Mo’at, despite herself, looked impressed. Trudy couldn’t figure it out.

"Come." Neytiri said to Mo'at. "Let me show you how they fly." Neytiri led her mother inside the Samson to show her the controls of the aircraft. Norm and Trudy tried to follow, but there simply wasn't room in the cockpit, and so they were left awkwardly cooling their heels outside.

Norm cleared his throat. “Your family died during Sara? I’m sorry.” He might be avoiding her, but he couldn’t let that pass.

“Thanks.”

“You and your mom made it out?”

“Yeah. That’s how I ended up on Pandora. Mom got acute abiogenic Parkinson’s from the floodwaters. RDA offered to pay for the treatment if I upped for off-planet duty.”

“How’s she doing now?”

“Dead.”

“What!? The treatment for AAP is 100% effective!”

She raised an eyebrow. “There’s no cure for being in a Maglev on Luna when the pressurization fails.”

Mo’at walked back over to Norm and Trudy, interrupting the conversation. “You control the machines with your eyes and hands? That is all?”

Trudy, confused, nodded. “It gets to be second nature, but that’s all you’ve got.”

Mo’at looked at the video in her hands. “And these are how you store your memories?”

“It’s one of the ways,” said Norm.

“Show me your First Song,” she commanded.

Norm led her over to the console they’d set up for the Na’vi, perched on a tall stool, and started typing awkwardly on the oversized keyboard. He started to read:

 

He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands.  
I will teach about him who experienced all things alike,  
Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.  
He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden,  
he brought information of the time before the Flood.  
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion,  
but then was brought to peace.

 

Mo’at interrupted. “This is ancient?”

“Almost five thousand years old. 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' is considered the first piece of literature, though not the first piece of writing. There’s some debate as to what actual literature is as opposed to just writing, and there are a lot of extant fragments, but this is the first complete story.”

“Show me more.”

And so began the strangest Wiki-walk Norm had ever been on. Each question led to an article or a video or a sound file, which generated another question. And another. And another. On history, biology, sports, culture, languages… everything. Norm translated and explained as he went, though even he had to confer with the other human Na’vi speakers to try to adequately convey the meaning of some of the terms. A small crowd started to gather.

It took hours. They scarcely even broke for lunch.

Trudy found herself watching the whole thing; it was fascinating to see someone try to explain your own culture to someone else. (And, occasionally, hilarious. They’d had to actually set up a miniature soccer field to adequately explain the offside rule, but had run up the white flag when it came to explaining the mass mania for wearing furry animal costumes that swept the world at the turn of the 22nd century.)

Max pulled up a chair next to Trudy and sat down. Daniel, Gabriella and Norm were involved in a deep debate trying to find the words to explain the Twin Paradox.

Jake joined them, sitting crosslegged on the ground. “Forget it, I don’t even understand that in English.”

Max and Trudy laughed.

“How is it that they don’t already know about all this?” Trudy whispered the two of them, gesturing to the computers.

Max replied, sotto voce. “In the classes, Grace used paper books - static images and text on paper- and she once brought a 2-D camera, but that was it. The thing of it is, First Contact situations are really hard to manage well. In the past, the more technologically-advanced cultures tended to go in and try to overawe the natives into compliance. Grace figured that there was enough of that going on with the mining operations and the weaponry, so she tried to keep it simple at the school. She was planning to introduce them to the tech gradually, but…”

“But she never got the chance.” Trudy finished.

“It was also a real pain in the ass to keep a link console working at the school. Not to mention that that program was one of the first things Selfridge cut when Grace started getting up his nose.”

The night was coming on when Mo’at finally pushed her chair away. She looked around her in meditative silence for several long minutes, and then spoke.

“All this machinery does more than destroy. You cannot hear the voices of your ancestors, so you found a way to let them speak. You do not have Eywa, and you were born blind, yet you have striven for all of time to overcome these defects. You have given me much to think about.” She nodded to Norm. “I thank you.”

She stalked away, leaving a shocked crowd in her wake, and none more shocked than her daughter.

The crowd broke up, but Trudy lingered, hoping to take advantage of the momentary thaw in her relations with Norm. Neytiri unwittingly dashed her hopes. “Perhaps there is time for a short flight? I would like to practice.”

Norm fled, again. “I’ll leave you to it.”

 

——

She decided to try again; they were having dinner in the mess with the rest of the humans when Jake and Neytiri came in. The pair were clearly bearing bad news - Jake looked sick and Neytiri couldn’t meet their eyes. They approached the group. “The Olo’uxulta has spoken. They’ve decided on the Äietisop,” said Neytiri.

“Oh shit, you’re kidding.” said Max.

“We’re dead,” said Norm.

“I don’t get it,” said Trudy.

Neytiri answered. “The oldest Tsahik will undergo a ceremony for four days to purify herself. She will then give herself over to Eywa and meditate on the problem. When she wakes, whatever decision she comes to will be accepted by the tribes.”

“And that’s a bad thing because… ? I’d think we’d have a better chance of convincing one woman than the entire world.”

Jake answered. “The oldest Tsahik is Radetkan of the Swokpa'li. Or, I should say, she was. The Swokpa'li were almost completely wiped out.”

The Swokpa'li had been a horse clan from the plains and, in keeping with the fate of all cavalry the first time they meet automatic weaponry, had died disproportionately.

The format for the Äietisop had been set down at the time of the First Songs, to be used as a court of law and parliament, the final appeal when inter-tribal disputes reached the point that such a Thing was needed. The Tsahiks from each warring tribe would be permitted to make their respective cases before all the Tsahiks and Olo'eyktans assembled, after which the oldest Tsahik would lie under the Tree of Souls, join with Eywa and deliberate.

Now that the format had been decided, events began to move quickly. Norm, as the best Na’vi linguist, was elected to speak for the humans. He was, of course, the logical choice, but now had to face the stress of preparing, translating and practicing the speech on which all their lives would depend.

Needless to say, for all that she and Norm were close to being on speaking terms again, this left them no time to be alone, no time to talk.

Trudy flew Max, Norm and Ameera to the Tree of Souls, while the rest of the humans waited anxiously by the commlink for the news. They stood with the Omaticaya, as had been previously agreed. Norm radiated anxiety; every so often, he would go over his speech again on his tablet. Overcome with sympathy and desperately wishing to impart confidence, Trudy took his (clammy) hand and squeezed it.

Startled, Norm looked up and gave her a panicky half-smile. Before he could say anything, however, the drums started pounding, calling everyone to attention.

——-

The event would be remembered as the 171st Äietisop since the Time of the First Songs. Sempere of the Nantang Clan spoke first. She excoriated the humans in no uncertain terms. She condemned their brutality, their rapaciousness. “From the very first moment we encountered these animals, all their thoughts were for what they could take from us, from Eywa and our world! They have killed our people and ravaged our planet!”

This was met with cheers and boos, and was largely as expected. However, when Dr. Spellman started to climb to the tree to begin his appeal, Sempere leapt to her feet again and shouted. “He does not get to speak here! They are not a recognized Tribe of the People!”

The crowd erupted. Arguments back and forth were shouted; on the one hand, the humans really weren’t a recognized Tribe of the People, but on the other, how was it fair to deny them a voice in these deliberations? (It was also universally considered that Sempere’s outburst had been in somewhat bad form, as such details should’ve been sorted out before the ceremony began, but Sempere had a known reputation for enjoying dramatic effect.)

Jake leapt to the fore. “They are under the protection of the Omaticaya!”

Sempere looked down on him. “Under your protection, yes, but that does not make them Na’vi! They have intruded themselves enough on our world, and now you would have them intrude on our most sacred of ceremonies!”

Jake bristled at this, but before it could come to blood, and to everyone’s great surprise, Mo’at’s voice cut through the din. “If they are not to be allowed to speak, then I will speak on their behalf!”

At the very least, she shocked everyone into silence. It was generally accepted that the Omaticayans had suffered the greatest loss - populations might be decimated, but no one else had lost their Hometree. The human delegation traded looks amongst themselves and with the Omaticaya; she had hardly been their partisan. At any rate, it satisfied the forms, and once the crowd settled down, Mo’at began.

Mo’at sang in the style of the First Songs. She sang of heartbreak and pain. She sang of a people trapped on a poisoned world, long since doomed by decisions made hundreds of years before they were born, lashing out like wounded animals, grabbing at anything that might buy a little more time for their children.

She sang of the scientists who had constructed entire disciplines so that their blind eyes might see. She sang of engineers who worked tirelessly that their soft, weak bodies might be protected on the land and sea and even in the icy black of space. She sang of historians, working to preserve the voices of the past without an Eywa to keep them. Barbarians they might be, but there were those amongst them who worked hard to correct this. “Their kind are not beyond redemption!”

The assembly’s reaction was decidedly mixed, but she’d given them enough to think about that no one responded peremptorily.

As soon as she finished, Radetkan was brought forth on a litter. A frail old woman, she slowly rose and, after making a gesture of greeting to the assembly, took her position before the Tree. She was dizzy and lightheaded from lack of food and sleep; physical purification was an important part of the ritual. (It would later be discovered that the stress of the hunger and sleep deprivation released enzymes into the Na’vi system that heightened the conductivity of the nerves in the queue, thus improving the connection to the planet's neural net. Or, as the Na’vi would say, the ritual brought the Tsahik closer to Eywa.)

The assembled Tsahiks sat in a ring around her, chanting. Radetkan closed her eyes. Her skin itched madly as Eywa’s tendrils connected with her nerve endings, but that lasted for just a second before she was swept away.

When she opened them again, she found herself looking out at her home village as it was when she was a girl, from a vantage point several feet shorter than she was used to. The scene brought a lump to her throat.

“I see you, ‘itetsyìp, after so many long years.” She turned to see her mother as she had been in her prime, when she was young and before the Sky People came.

“I see you, sa’nu,” she said, and ran to her mother’s arms. They embraced, and her eyes welled with tears.

“You would not be here in this place without good reason. Walk with me to the river, and we shall talk.”

She took her mother's hand, as a child would, and complied. “I am sent for Eywa’s advice, sa’nu.”

Her mother nodded, but walked in silence for a time. “How I envy you, Radetkan, to live in such interesting times!”

“Envy me!? They have taken my sons! My grandchildren!”

“They have returned to Eywa in defense of their homes and families. One cannot ask for a better death.”

“The Sky People have brought nothing but death! We must be rid of all of them!”

“And this is what you will tell the Olo’uxulta?”

“It is!”

Her mother frowned. “Why do you come for Eywa’s advice, then, if you have already decided?”

“They do not see! They can not see. They are abominations! Surely that is obvious!”

“Your grief is clouding your judgment. They are not all as you have described them. Abominations would not lay down their lives for our world and exile themselves forever from their homes.”

“Lives they would not have had to risk if they had stayed home to fix the world they already have! We do not need their pollution here. The younglings are already taking too much of an interest in their technology! Our ways will be corrupted, or lost! Our world will change, and not for the better!”

Her mother pursed her lips. “Do you remember, when you were just a few years old, we journeyed to visit the Clan of the Eastern Sea? In the mountains, we saw that young ikran who didn’t want to fly? He was well beyond the age that he should have spread his wings, but still he stayed in the nest. He cried piteously as his mother pushed him out. How cruel he must have thought her!”

Radetkan rolled her eyes. “I only appear to be a child, sa’nu, stop talking to me as if I’d barely left the womb. We are not baby ikran and it is NOT ordained that we must leave our world.”

Her mother smiled indulgently. “Are you so sure of that?”

“Eywa has given no sign!”

She raised her eyebrow. “The Sky People fly among the stars. Jakesully learned our ways, was reborn Omaticaya, became Toruk Makto and cast away his human form when he passed through the Eye of Eywa. If anything I would say that Eywa is not being particularly subtle.”

“THEN EYWA IS WRONG!”

Her mother looked down at her sadly. “You can say that and still believe yourself a Tsahik? You do not see, ‘itetsyìp.”

She released her hand, and Radetkan fell.

———

Those on the outside waited with varying degrees of patience. The Tsahiks maintained their chanting vigil, but the Olo’eyktans started to talk amongst themselves. Amongst the Omaticaya, at least, the talk centered on Mo’at’s conversion, minor miracle that it was. Neytiri gave the credit to (and laid the blame on) Norm and the day they spent with the database.

But in the end, everything still hung on Radetkan’s verdict.

Trudy was not given to handling inaction well. She’d flown the humans up in her Samson, and so, for lack of anything better to do, went to her airship and started running some routine checks. Occupied completely with this, and with her worries for the outcome, she hardly heard when Norm came in to sit behind her, in the teacher’s chair.

They sat in silence, for a time.

“It always starts the same. I’m running with the machine gun. I feel the impact, and I’m in agony,” said Norm.

Trudy turned back to look at him.

“You can voluntarily leave the link, but in the dream, I can’t find the way out. I’m trapped in the dying body, and I feel it shutting down. I see the tunnel that everybody talks about - it’s really just your body shutting down the nerves on the periphery of your eye to try to preserve your main field of vision - but it’s not the tunnel back to my own body. I feel myself dying and I can’t find my way back home.”

He ran his hands through his hair again, and began to rock a little. “That’s the first variation,” he said. She took one of his hands. “The second, at the last minute, I do find my way back to my own body, but the wounds are real… my blood starts to fill up the link chamber and the whole process starts again, only this time there’s nowhere to run to, because I am in my own head.”

The pressure on Trudy’s hand grew exponentially, but she barely noticed. Norm continued. “And it seems so stupid. I know what you said, but it seems so stupid that it should bother me. I’m fine, and I’m here, and there were so many dead. Do you know, it took us weeks to bury all the bodies? I mean, it was total carnage. We didn’t even find everybody. After a month, we had to assume that the jungle got them all, because it’s just that kind of ecosystem. Over half the Na’vi who fought are still missing, and a third of the humans never got found…”

His voice started to choke, and he stopped. She wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her lips to the top of his head. She so envied people who knew what to say in moments like these! Who knew how to say something to ease pain without sounding stupid, or minimizing the situation. She held him tighter.

He fought the tears with everything he had. Trudy, ever the practical mind, started working on a plan of action. “You need to get more sleep. It won’t make things better, but keeping on with this screwed-up schedule will only make things worse. No more sleeping by yourself. Just move in with me. They say the depression meds help. I bet Max would hook you up, if you asked him. When you need to talk, I’ll listen, and when you need to be held, I’ll hold you. No matter what you need, I’ll help you get it. I love you, Norm.”

The dam broke. He wept openly in her arms, while she kissed him and rocked him gently.

Maybe that was enough, after all.

Eventually, the torrent stopped. Norm pulled in halting breaths, and looked directly at her. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his face on his sleeve. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m such an idiot.”

“Never. Not ever.”

He kept apologizing, and she kept demurring, until she gave up and resorted to humor. “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world…”

Despite himself, Norm gave a hiccoughing laugh. “That’s the worst Bogart impression I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, well, when it comes to that, I’m handicapped. At least I finally got to see the end of that damned movie.”

She helped him get cleaned up, and got him some water. There was much more to say, but they didn’t dare be away for too much longer. Radetkan could awaken at any minute.

It was, at any rate, a start.

———

Radetkan dropped for a night and a day through the sky and the stars, and slammed to earth in the middle of a parched desert. As she got up and dusted herself off, she noted that here her body felt young and energetic, at the peak of her strength and vigor.

“That was quite an entrance.”

She turned around. Grace Augustine sat cross-legged on a rock, smoking a cigarette.

“Pah!” She spat in the ground in front of her, and shouted, “It would have been better if you had never come!”

“I agree completely. But that can’t be undone now.”

“It is not fair! If we were to go to the stars, it should have been at a time of our own choosing, not thrust upon us by you!”

“Again, you’ll get no argument from me. But they will come. And if you want to preserve your world at all, you’ll listen to the humans on the base.”

“It is better to die as pure Na’vi than to accept your kind and your corruption!”

“Yeah? You going to take a planetary vote on that?”

“The People could never behave as your kind have!”

"You can't know that. Nobody knows how they'll react once the resources get scarce, until a famine starts and their children start going hungry. Or once they find themselves in a position of power. We have a saying, 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Can you tell me that there has never once been a bad Olo’yektan, not one, since the Time of the First Songs?”

Of course, she could not. Radetkan gave no answer, but glowered at the woman on the rock.

“And while we’re at it, if The People could never behave as my kind has, why are you so worried about our influence?”

Caught in the contradiction, she sputtered. “I do not wish to see my world change.”

She nodded. “Believe it or not, that I can understand. But now the wave is coming and it can’t be stopped. Do you want to accept it, flow with it and help direct it, or do you want to just let it roll right over you?”

She looked away.

“Not all change is bad. Sometimes, it makes you stronger.”

“You would have us give up who we are!”

“Not in a million years. I just want you to learn to defend yourselves! You have no idea what’s coming! Be Na’vi! Find a way to do this in a Na’vi manner! Write histories for centuries after this deploring the perfidy of the human race! You want to assign blame? Fine! Give us the blame. I, Dr. Grace Augustine, hereby accept the blame for this horrible situation on behalf of humanity in perpetuity! Just accept our help in preserving all of your culture that we can! Let the humans have the base, and let them negotiate to buy you protection until you can protect yourselves!”

“Why are you like this!?”

“You want to judge? Look, your people grew up in a Paradise. We didn’t. We protected our own kind not by keeping a balance, but by having more. More food meaning more children, meaning our genes carried on. A progenerative arms race. That’s how our world evolved. From the beginning, this is how we prevailed, and old habits are hard to break.”

“You are savages.”

“It’s not the first time we’ve been called that, and I’ll bet it won’t be the last. You were born in a state of perfect harmony, and we’ve had to work for it all throughout our history. And yes, the path is littered with failures, but that doesn’t mean we won’t one day succeed.”

Radetkan was silent for a time. "From all you have said, there will come a day when that base isn't enough."

Grace nodded. "Possibly. So, on that day, make sure that every Na’vi hand holds the better weapon."

She rallied one final retort. "We shouldn't have to do that."

"Should? While we're discussing 'should,' can I point out that I shouldn't be dead?"

Despite herself, Radetkan laughed. Dr. Augustine held out her hand to shake, and Radetkan took it, her big blue hand dwarfing the tiny pink fingers.

Radetkan let go, and fell away from Grace.

——

She opened her eyes to see her fellow Tsahiks around her, waiting patiently.

She got to her feet, slowly, and with the help of her attendants. The discomfort from her physical privations was nothing compared to the wretched feeling of being a fragile old woman again.

Knowing the forms, she began to speak immediately. “My mother and father died the year before the Sky People came. In that, I envy them. But as Eywa chose us to live through these horrible days, we must rise to face them. Eywa dispenses justice and maintains perfect balance, but the universe is unfair, and has placed its thumbs on the scales. This world is ours, and ours alone, but the Sky People own the sky and the stars above it. Those who would destroy us will come, and we must be ready. We must learn to use the tools of the invader to preserve all that we are!”

There was a ripple of surprise in response to this. The humans watching dared hope for the first time.

“And while humans might take without regard, we cannot do so and remain Na’vi. We are better than they! The Sky People may stay on their base, and negotiate the peace with their fellow humans. We will learn to use their weapons, and learn to fly in their machines, and in return, we will teach those humans willing to learn our ways, and allow them to study our world, in the hopes that they can be enlightened. We will teach those willing to learn, and defend against those who will not, until the day that we grow stronger than they are!” She collapsed back.

The crowd of Tsahiks and Olo’yektans burst out into cheers of agreement and shouts of rage. In the hubbub, Radetkan was placed on a litter to be carried to get some food and rest, leaving the chaos of an all-out political argument in her wake. As they passed the human delegation, an urge overcame her, something that she would never quite understand. She raised her hand to stop her bearers, and looked down.

“Where are your instruments, Dr. Spellman? You must take some samples…”

——-

The negotiations continued for weeks; first amongst the Na’vi and then between the Na’vi and Earth, but in the end the details were hammered out, and the humans were able to make themselves a home.

Jiang-Mei got the spare Valkyrie working, and Trudy offered to take the first volunteers up for a quick orbital flight, to show them the perspective from which they would have to learn to defend.

The offer accepted, Neytiri joined Trudy, and together they readied the Valkyrie to go. Neytiri had developed quite a taste for human-style flight, and was very keen to break orbit for the first time. As they waited by the spaceship, Neytiri handed a small package to Trudy.

“Here,” she said, grinning innocently. “To go with the other one.”

“Uh… thanks,” said Trudy, confused. She unwrapped a small vidframe and pressed play.

The picture was shaky, of marginal quality and very clearly shot by a camera being held covertly. The film - with sound, no less - was from the monumental victory party they’d held on the base the day the Pitcairn Treaty had been signed. The bash had run until the dawn, and had gotten pretty raucous. Raucous enough that she had been sure the next morning that no one had noticed when she and Norm (both more than a little drunk) had started necking like teenagers on the couch.

She was wrong.

She gave a suspicious cough, and glowered merrily at Neytiri’s whoops of laughter. “Tell Sully he’s a dead man.”

Nevertheless, that vid joined the rest of her family on the dashboard, and stayed there for as long as she was able to fly.

Soon enough, however, their passengers gathered - they were mostly Omaticaya, and many were there to prove their bravery. This trip would be the first of dozens; hundreds more Na’vi would volunteer as soon as they saw that the first trip returned safely.

They launched, and after a brief interval to let her passengers get used to the thrill of zero-gee, Trudy lowered the UV shields from the windows.

No one stands unmoved at the sight of their homeworld when seen from a spaceship: a small blue marble shining out against the stygian depths of infinite space. The Na’vi were no exception. Some cried out, others prayed, and still others stood dumbstruck.

What Trudy always remembered, though, was a small girl floating at the opposite window, staring out at the starfield. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth formed into an awestruck grin.

The girl saw Trudy watching her and explained, “I did not know there were so many…”

 

\-----

Excerpt: “Interview with Rosaline Spellman” by Deanna Wellsley. Inter-Planetary News. Inter-Planetary Network, Shanghai. 17 October 2204

DEANNA WELLSELY: It’s been five decades since the founding of the Pitcairn Colony on Pandora, and Earth’s furthest-flung colony is still as controversial as ever. We’re here with Dr. Rosaline Spellman, first Pandoran-born human, to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the Pitcairn colony. Dr. Spellman, thank you for coming.  
   
ROSALINE SPELLMAN: Thank you, Deanna, I’m glad to be here.

WELLSLEY: How are you adjusting to being on Earth? This is your second trip off Pandora, is it not?

SPELLMAN: Yes, I came here for college. It’s looking much better than when I left it last time, but the gravity seems to have gotten stronger over the last twenty years!

[LAUGHTER]

WELLSLEY: There have been some big changes, that’s true! The big story, of course, is the announcement tomorrow of the latest breakthrough from the Pandoran research labs… any truth to the rumors that they’ve developed a new faster-than-light engine?

SPELLMAN: Sorry, you’ve got the wrong Spellman… I’m just a biologist. My brother is the aerospace engineer.

WELLSLEY: But surely you can give us some idea.

SPELLMAN: I am sworn to secrecy. You’ll find out with everyone else tomorrow.

WELLSLEY: But what do you say to the controversy surrounding the ongoing partnership? That Earth has essentially built up its greatest competitor?

SPELLMAN: Against whom are we competing, and for what? We and the Na’vi are the only sapient life forms we know of, and it’s a big universe.

WELLSLEY: And ours are the only two planets truly capable of sustaining life as we know it. There are those who would argue that the Na’vi will invade Earth, if given a chance.

SPELLMAN: I’ve heard that, over and over again, and I’ll repeat, it’s completely unfounded. Why would the Na’vi want it? The air may be clearing and the ecosystems rebounding - developments, I might add, that wouldn’t have happened without the joint research labs on Pandora - but an inch-thick patch of seasonal ice at the North Pole does not a complete recovery make. It’s still a mess.

WELLSLEY: Let me play you a clip of the Humanity Party’s latest statement, given by their spokesman Brenden Rattray:

[ON SCREEN]  
RATTRAY: We feel that the Earth must be kept for humans, and humans only! Our hard-earned tax dollars should not be going to support this wrongheaded idea of dragging them out of the Stone Age! They’re freeloaders! If the Na’vi want to develop their infrastructure, that’s their business. They’re stealing our resources and our research ideas. They will overrun us if given half a chance!

SPELLMAN: That’s just complete hogwash. First of all, the Pandoran labs cost Earth nothing at all… in fact, they’re a net gain. Second of all, the contributions of the Na’vi have been at the very core of our research paths for decades. And thirdly, Stanford may have a few Na’vi students, but those students have to serve for four years in orbit on the Augustine Station to show that they can handle it before they’re allowed to set foot on an ISV. That particular test for entry has a 97% failure rate, with the majority having to return planetside within a month to the school’s Pitcairn Campus. Very few Na’vi can stand to be off-planet for any length of time - try to imagine spending four years in a sensory-deprivation tank. They evolved with this close connection to their home planet; it makes it very hard to leave.

WELLSLEY: There are numerous reports that the Na’vi are developing organic computers, akin to the network on Pandora, which will remove this limitation; your CV indicates that you’ve been assisting in this endeavor.

SPELLMAN: They certainly are, and I certainly am. But any developments in that respect are a long way off. The complexities of the problems involved beggar the imagination.

WELLSLEY: Speaking of Stanford, the Terran Na’vi movement has protested their close association with the Pandorans as well, arguing that we have no right to subject the Na’vi to our “educational indoctrination,” as they put it.

SPELLMAN: Look, the Terran Na’vi movement and the Humanity Party are just flip-sides of the same coin. The Terran Na’vi want the actual Na’vi to remain museum pieces; theme park exhibits that they come off as oh-so-educated and sophisticated to study and talk about and collect artifacts from, but when the Na’vi turn out to be actual living beings with a desire for non-romantic self-determination, they get their noses out of joint.

WELLSLEY: They are your greatest partisans.

SPELLMAN: And with friends like them, who needs enemies?

WELLSLEY: They feel that greater understanding will be achieved by more “conversions” as they’re called, as opposed to more academic collaboration…

SPELLMAN: The Na’vi have a very stringent process to determine who gets to be chosen as an avatar driver, much less who gets to attempt the conversion ceremony. Most of the Terran Na’vi are annoyed because they can’t make the cut.

WELLSLEY: Your father was one of the original drivers, was he not? Why hasn’t he “converted?”

SPELLMAN: (laughing) Well, he may, yet. But not while my mother lives. She won’t, and he won’t without her.

WELLSLEY: In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding, the NAFTA countries have rescinded the death sentence imposed on the original Pandoran rebels. Do any of them have plans to return home?

SPELLMAN: Now that they’re all too old to risk six years in hypersleep? How very kind of the NAFTA governments. No, I don’t think so.

WELLSLEY: This past year, Pandora mourned the death of Jake Sully, the leader of the original Rebellion and Olo’yektan of the Omaticaya. What changes do you see now that the Pitcairn Advisory Council is no longer headed by a converted human?

SPELLMAN: Jakesully’s passing was a great loss to Pandora and Earth; I can’t imagine anyone having done a better job of shepherding our two peoples through the early years of the colony. How many times did he keep negotiations going when everyone thought that there would be a war? However great the loss, though, I don’t see it affecting relations in the least. The Na’vi are as committed as ever to the Earth-Pandora partnership. It has paid off enormous dividends for everyone, human and Na’vi alike, and will continue to do so, as long as Earth keeps up her share of the bargain.

WELLSLEY: Well, that’s all the time we have. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Spellman.


End file.
